Safari at Serengeti

I love Safaris! I went for one in South Africa a few years go and fell in love with the idea of sneak-peaking on wild animals in their natural environment.

I hate zoos – there are so depressing! Because honestly – if you want to see a zebra, get your sexy ass over to where they live, don’t make it live in a cage for the rest of their lives. Okay, rant over – back to Tanzania 🙂

I think it was a year ago when I decided as part of my yearly trip planning to go back to Africa again. I was sitting in front of my MacBook Air in my dining room with Peanut running around after a ball when I typed in to Google ‘best spots for safari in the world’ and ‘Serengeti’ came up. I have heard the name many times before.
As soon as I started looking at the photos I thought to myself ‘Oh my goodness! This looks exactly how I always imagined Africa. I need to go there soon!’.
5 minutes later I also read Serengeti was the inspiration for Lion King. Then, I Google mapped it (yes, it’s embarrassing to admit, but I didn’t know which country Serengeti was in). And THEN I realized it’s right next Kilimanjaro (both are in Tanzania). And I always knew I will climbed Kilimanjaro one day so it made sense to do Serengeti at the same time.

Finally here

Going on a safari is a great idea before climbing Kili, because it helps you get over a jet lag and adjust to the altitude. Ngorongoro Conversational area, which is a part of every Serengeti expedition is actually on a little bit of altitude (around 6000 feet), but it’s enough to help your body adjust later on during your trek.

Back to Serengeti 🙂

Our safari was 4 days. you can do 3, you can do 7, but I wouldn’t go on less than 4 days if it’s your only safari opportunity during your time in Africa (I knew I had another 4 days of safari in Kenya so didn’t want to go for too long)

Our schedule was as follows:

Day 1: Leave Arusha and visit Lake Manyara National Park.
Day 2: Serengeti
Day 3: Serengeti
Day 4: Ngorongoro Crater and back to Arusha at night.

We chose to camp, which is the most wallet- friendly option, but you can also stay in lodges or fancy hotels. The safari part doesn’t change, just the luxury level of your bed 🙂

A few things you need to know when planning a safari:
– camping is completely out in the wild so you do get wildebeests, elephants and hyenas walk right by your tent. That means that for safety reasons, you really shouldn’t leave your tent. That means that every single night you will wake up dying to go to the bathroom – of course. BUT – the moment when you are lying down in your sleeping bag while listening to a giant buffalo munching on grass right next to your ear at 1am in the morning is priceless:) I was very paranoid he will stumble on one of the rings that keep the tent in place, fall onto me and crash me hihi.

With Masaai lady

– if you ever get car sick, then safari might not be your thing – Serengeti roads are very bumpy and I often felt like on a rodeo.

– you travel with your guide/driver and your chef. It takes a second to get used to be so catered (especially having your own chef) but really have to have someone taking care of food. It’s Africa and you donjt get a grocery store or Starbucks for days sometimes.

– the nights are cold! Luckily, I had my Big Agnes sleeping bag with me which is rated up to 15 F so I wasn’t cold, but it is definitely chilly so be prepared.

– you eat a lot of popcorn – like A LOT! Your chef serves you popcorn at 5p while you wait for your dinner, but the dinner usually takes forever and before you know it you had 2 pounds of popcorn and are not hungry for dinner anymore. Oh well;)

– cost: 4 day budget version with sleeping in tents is about $1000 a person.